by Phil Gottschalk. It's about the Confederate Missouri Brigade in the Civil War. Taken from page 353:

Quote:

Alonzo H. Shelton, born in Kentucky, was farming in Platte County when he enlisted in August 1862 in the 3rd Missouri Infantry. He was captured in January 1863, exchanged and reported to "D" 3rd Missouri Infantry and later served in the consolidated 3rd-5th Missouri Infantry. He recalled a humorous incident when his regiment relieved a regiment of Georgia Militia manning the breastworks:

'[The enemy] had been having fun with the militia because their guns would not shoot far enough to hit them, and they did not know of the change of troops in the night, so a little after daylight they climbed out of their works and yelled out while they patted themselves behind 'here Johnny take a shot at me' and Johnny turned loose on them and turned several of them over before they could scramble back in their works, and from then until ten o'clock that was the hardest picket fight I was ever in, it was just a hard battle. I fired over forty shots, my gun got leaded and choked and my shoulder was black and bruised from the kicking of the gun. About ten a yank yelled out and wanted to know what troops we were, and little Johnny Williams, from Clinton county yelled back to him that we were 'War Democrats, come and take us' but the yanks were getting enough of us and called for a truce which we agreed to. The truce gave me a chance to clean my gun, but they came out of their pits and we met them halfway, talked and traded knives, coffee and tobacco, and finally had dinner together between the lines. After dinner we went back to our pits and shot at everything that wore blue coats just as vigorous as we did in the morning."

War Democrats was the element of the Democratic Party that supported the war, as opposed to the Copperhead Democrats who were anti-war and would have allowed the Confederacy to secede.